


Space Station

by Colubrina



Series: Dramione One Shots [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28478247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: Hermione's won a chance to get off planetside and study at Hogwarts. It's the chance of a lifetime, but the culture shock is very real.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Series: Dramione One Shots [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1464850
Comments: 24
Kudos: 109





	Space Station

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on FFN in February of 2019

The corridors moved. It was one of the first things Hermione had had to get used to when she arrived at school. Planetside things didn’t move. Or, rather, they moved in logical ways. But at Hogwarts, the corridors shifted depending on some complex array of gravity wells and solar flares and what she suspected was just plain orneriness on the part of the designers. She hadn’t wanted to seem ignorant, though, so she’d nodded her head briskly as the prefect explained. Moving corridors, of course. Nothing unusual to see here.

It was just that planetsiders didn’t come here very often and she didn’t want to seem overawed or unsophisticated. The station school was for space brats, the kids of engineers and scientists and the staff that worked to keep the whole edifice running and clean. To them, low-grav corridors were old hat. They’d been sailing down them since they were tots. To her, it was flying. It was magic. 

But admitting that would set her up for mockery.

Her roommates changed their nail color with the touch of a wand. Embedded screens. Didn’t they have those down below? No? They’d giggled when she’d said stiffly she’d never seen anything like it and Lavender said airily, “Well, technology doesn’t always make it planetside.” It was an excuse, and Hermione didn’t like to need excuses made for her. She was the smartest girl in her form. She’d been winning science fairs since she was seven, and she’d been invited to come here by the Deputy Head of School. Lavender was here because she’d been born here. She hadn’t earned her place. She wasn’t special.

Making friends wasn’t going any better here than it had before. Class wasn’t any better than the dormitories.

“You need to set the magnets so,” the professor said, and the feather in his anti-grav field rose obligingly off the table and hovered in space. “There’s an art to it.”

Hermione set hers precisely the way her class-tab said, measuring the distance three times to be sure and her feather cooperated. Up it went, and her pleased smile became smug when she glanced around the classroom. No one else had done it. She leaned over to help the boy at the next table because at home you were supposed to do that once you were done. Money was tight, and no school had enough teachers. It was good leadership training, the government said, making a virtue from a necessity. She’d been doing it since she could remember, and this Ronald clearly needed help. “Did you measure?” she asked.

He jerked his set away from her.

“It’s just,” she started to say because she could see where he was going wrong.

“Mind your business,” he said. “No wonder Lavender complains about you. You don’t know anything.”

Snickers filled the classroom, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see a blond boy jabbing his elbow into his own seatmate. “Dirtsider,” one of them said, and that got even louder snickers.

“You can’t ever get clean planetside, you know,” said another. “No real freshers. Only water. And all that dirt. It’s why they don’t touch.”

Hermione’s shoulder’s stiffened. This was not fair. She knew enough to do the assignment. She knew enough to do it on the very first try, and this boy with his ginger hair and his spotty skin, this boy who had grown up with anti-grav, couldn’t make it work and it should be easy for him. And these people who implied she wasn’t clean. Did they know people planetside called them spacers and infects? She’ll have to be in quarantine just to come home, a friend of her mother had said in a scandalized voice. They still have measles up there, and that blood disease. 

“Fine,” Hermione said, keeping the tremor out of her voice. “I was just trying to help.”

“Well, don’t.” 

She kept it together until they were released from class. Her hands didn’t shake as she put the anti-grav kit back on the shelf, and she tucked her class-tab back into her bag without so much as a tear. But when she was out of the room, away from the rules of the teacher, it seemed like she could feel eyes boring into her back. Every laugh seemed like it was directed at her, and she walked at first, then ran, pushing the ginger boy out of the way. There was a public fresher on this level, and she slammed her palm against the door reader and tried to keep the tears inside until the door slid open. Until it closed again with a whoosh. Until she could lean against the immaculate white wall and cry and cry and cry.

Until the door opened again.

Hermione looked up, hand reaching for the knife she hadn’t been allowed to bring. No weapons on station. You won’t need to worry about violence, the transport tech had said with a bitter laugh. They’ve all got plenty up there.

The blond boy slipped into the fresher and smirked at her. She scowled. He had grey eyes, and skin so pale he probably had to stay out of the solar rooms. He’d clearly never spent a single day in real light. “What do you want?” she asked as ungraciously as possible.

“Weasley’s a try-hard,” he said.

“More like a fail-hard,” she muttered.

To her surprise, he laughed and stuck out his hand. “Name’s Malfoy,” he said. “Draco Malfoy.”

Hermione recognized the name from the board of directors. He was important, or at least his father was. Well, she didn’t care. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get dirty,” she asked. She wasn’t going to fall for some boy ready to pretend to be friends then set her up as a joke, especially since he’d already laughed at her in class. Dirtsider. What a term. She crossed her arms and ran her eyes over his black uniform. Not a speck of dust and a green enamel pin on the collar. “And why would I touch you? We don’t shake hands anymore planetside, you know. Infect.”

“Hogwarts is a funny place,” he said. His hand still hung in the air. “We don’t get a lot of planetsiders.”

“I’d figured that much out, thank you.”

“I can help.”

“Why?”

The hand didn’t waver. “Because you did it right in class the first time.”

That was a reason she understood. She unfolded her arms and, trying not to let him see how weird it was to touch a stranger, set her hand in his. His skin was dry and smooth. She suspected her own palm was much sweatier. “Granger,” she said, mimicking the way he’d introduced himself. “Hermione Granger.” She yanked her hand back as soon as she could without looking like she really thought he might have some disease, and was careful not to wipe it on her own uniform.

Draco’s grin made his nose wrinkle. He was trouble, and she knew it, but it was hard not to smile back. “Come on,” he said, palming the door back open. “I’ve got to introduce you to the rest of Slytherin.”

“Slytherin?”

“A club,” he said. “Secret. You can’t tell.”

“Is that ginger in it?” she asked warily as she followed him out of the fresher and back into the corridor. She didn’t want to go anywhere that ginger was. And she didn’t want to get expelled, sent back planetside. It would be a humiliating failure and, even though she’d barely been here, this place was amazing. She didn’t want to give it up to go back to her mundane life on the surface.

Draco Malfoy laughed, and it was a mean laugh, but it wasn’t directed at her. It invited her in and maybe, she thought, she was willing to do that. She’d step into a circle that kept other people out if it let her have a place. “No,” he said. “We have standards.”

“Standard that include a dirtsider?” she asked. 

He stopped walking to look at her, and for a moment his grey eyes looked scared, and the mask of the poised space brat fell away, and she realized he was as nervous about her rejecting him as she was about being made fun of. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

She reached carefully for his hand, not sure this was allowed, but when he slid his fingers through hers and squeezed, everything felt better. She felt less alone. “Well,” she said. “Lead the way, then.”

They passed Lavender and Ronald in the corridor, and Hermione felt a frisson of smug pleasure at how shocked they both looked. A director’s kid with the dirtsider. Lavender whispered something into Ronald’s ear, and they both laughed, and Hermione tightened her mouth. Screw them. The vulgarity felt daring in her mind, so she thought it again. Screw all of them. She was going to join this Slytherin of Draco Malfoy’s, and she was going to make them all sorry.

She squeezed Draco’s hand, the corridor ahead of them began to shift, and they both started to run. If you caught the moving halls just right, you could slide all the way to your destination. Which they did.


End file.
